Electronic devices, such as personal computers, handheld computers, mobile phones, and the like, provide user interfaces allowing a user to navigate and select interactive items and trigger actions from the electronic device. Various methods have been developed for human-computer interaction, particularly for displaying and interacting with interactive items such as information elements, objects, actions and events, displayed in a display region associated with the user interface.
Point and click mechanisms are typically used in a conventional graphical user interface (GUI).
In these implementations, a user commonly uses a pointing device such as a mouse or touch pad to navigate menus of interactive items, and select desired interactive items by, for example, pressing or clicking the pointing device.
A problem with conventional user interfaces of the type described above is that they may be largely object-oriented. The input of a user is typically mapped to a display region of the electronic device and then interpreted in relation to interactive items displayed in the display region at a given time. In conventional GUIs, relatively little response is provided to movement and/or positioning of a pointer before the user ultimately makes a selection. Moreover, the efficiency of these user interfaces may be unsatisfactory, as many repetitions of “point and click” may be required to select a desired interactive item.
More recently, GUIs have been developed wherein a user is capable of navigating menus of interactive items without being required to press or click to indicate a particular selection. An example of such a GUI is referred to as a crossing-based interface (CBI). CBIs typically make use of thresholds provided in a control region of the user interface, wherein crossing of a certain threshold by a pointer triggers discrete actions from the electronic device. A user may, for example, cycle through sets of interactive items displayed in the display region through swiping movements within the control region.
In CBI implementations, greater response is provided to movement and/or positioning of a pointer, the pointer typically being either a cursor in the display region or a body part of the user. The need for a user to press or click to indicate a selection may therefore be obviated to a certain degree. However, a disadvantage of such interfaces may be that items displayed in the display region at a given time are relatively static and/or inert. For example, a user may be required to move a pointer beyond a threshold provided by a certain item in the display region before a further item or items are displayed in the display region. Accordingly, navigating menus and selecting a desired interactive item may still be a cumbersome task.
The present invention aims to alleviate these and other problems, at least to some extent.
The preceding discussion of the background to the invention is intended only to facilitate an understanding of the present invention. It should be appreciated that the discussion is not an acknowledgment or admission that any of the material referred to was part of the common general knowledge in the art as at the priority date of the application.